“We Do Yarns”: Ridley Scott Answers Ad Directors’ Questions

Above: Ridley Scott at BFI Southbank, photo by Tim Whitby for BFI.

The BFI has just wrapped on an epic season of screenings and events – 'Ridley Scott: Building Cinematic Worlds' – giving the UK film-buff community another excuse to reflect on his directing career. For the advertising industry, appreciating this master of cinematic world-building means recognising not only his feature films but also his enduring influence on commercial filmmaking – from Hovis’ ‘Boy on the Bike’ to Apple’s ‘1984’, and the decades of work from his company, RSA Films. Advertising is where Ridley Scott has honed his craft since the mid ‘60s.

“I’m not a surfer, but I caught the wave of the advertising biz at the right moment,” he says, speaking to LBB in the closing week of his BFI retrospective. Commercial television was still in its infancy and the role of directors hadn’t fully been realised. “I knew nothing about it other than the fact that it would bring me closer to filming.”

Young Ridley had proven himself as a designer, training through the Royal College of Art travelling scholarship. But he soon became obsessed with film. While in New York, he discovered filmmakers D. A. Pennebaker and Richard Leacock. “If you know anything about documentaries, those are the godfathers,” he says. “I worked for them for a year, and in doing so I got bitten by the bug of 16mm, working in the editing room. That stayed with me.”

When he returned to London, he had to continue designing with a steady job at the BBC. But he saw commercials as an opportunity to get behind the camera. “I was ‘illegally’ doing commercials on the side,” he says. “I could get paid £100 for the day, while at the BBC as a full-board designer I was getting £75 a week after tax. I thought, there’s something seriously wrong here. I’m going to go freelance."

Very quickly Ridley was asked if he wanted to direct and soon he was involved in a company with a guarantee of £1,200 a year. “Are you kidding?” He laughs at his lucky career break. “I grabbed that, got myself a mortgage, bought a little house in East Sheen,” he grins.

“Meanwhile the work came at me like a tornado. We were the biggest company in London at that point over the next year and a half. Things dawned on me quickly. I thought, ‘I’m the only director here – I’d better move on and start my own company.’”

In 1968 Ridley, aged 31, and his younger brother, Tony Scott, founded Ridley Scott Associates (RSA) – a company that would come to define advertising production ever since.

It was a heady time to be a director making commercials. “Alan Parker and Adrian Lyne – really, they were my serious competitors,” he remembers. “Then my brother came up the outside track, being six years younger, then there’s Hugh Hudson, etc.”

The quality of ideas and craft at that time was unmatched, he reflects. “People would say when you go for a beer or a cup of tea, you’d go to the kitchen while the programme was on because you’ve got to get back to the commercials. Because commercials then were an art form.”

Ridley remembers the best scripts coming out of Collett Dickenson Pearce in the ‘60s and ‘70s. “CDP was the best agency, and I tried to get in,” he says. “I could never get in, because Parker dominated.” As a former copywriter at the agency Alan Parker hoovered up all the top jobs there.

“Lyne was a bit closer to what I did, which was part visual and part performance,” remembers Ridley. “We would watch newcomers every Monday morning with a cigarette and cup of tea. I’d say, ‘Who did that?’ They’d say, ‘Adrian.’ ‘Fuck Adrian.’ He was so talented, it used to drive me crazy.”

He’s visibly energised speaking about advertising and the ‘wave’ that he caught in those early years along with his peers. Despite being one of the most venerated figures in cinema, he relishes the chance to reflect on the more commercial work that started it all for him -- and how it shaped his directing style.

More than half a century since he directed his first ad, Ridley Scott’s influence on the discipline of commercial directing is impossible to ignore. LBB’s Alex Reeves gathered questions from some of today’s top advertising directors and put them to the legendary director.

Sam Brown
Rogue Films

You directed so many great TV commercials in the early days of the industry. What was it about directing ads that you loved so much? And what learnings proved useful in graduating to features?

Ridley> The ads I love most? I mean, I did a lot in those times. I think I must have done 2,500 commercials, personally – 100 a year, two a week. People would say, “How many have you done?” I’d say, “12.” They’d say, “What the fuck are you doing? You could have gone and played golf!”

But I could manage it because I was also a very good camera operator. I know Adrian [Lyne] was a camera operator, [Alan] Parker less so. But being an operator is very efficient, because the two components on a floor when you’re working against the clock are the 1st AD and the operator. If you direct as the operator, that is super efficient. We just cleaned up, in every possible kind of franchise.

My big ones… I did a big commercial series over five years for Strongbow cider. I made friends with copywriters and senior producers who could bring me in and I’d rewrite. I’d say, “Listen, you’ve got this guy with long hair on King’s Road – that’s bullshit. Why don’t we make it mediaeval?” They’d say, “Yeah, let’s do mediaeval.”

A big one for me was Harvest Pies, with a symbol of a massive 18-hand cart being led by a six-year-old child. That was beautiful. Then Hovis, then Benson & Hedges. I mean, it never stopped.

I think you’ve either got an eye or you haven’t. I was blessed with a good eye. Adrian had a great eye. Parker, with his art-directing mentality, also had a good eye for what he did. If you’ve got the good eye, you’re going to get the most work, because we were primarily telling 30-second stories in picture form.

I got all the ones abroad. Scripts would say “open on palm trees” – I’d say, "I’ll do it." I went to Jamaica seven times. It was fantastic.

The learning curve for me was knowing I’d be heading towards film at some point. Because I was doing so well financially, by the time I was 38 I realised I was never going to make a movie. So I closed down and stopped doing any commercials for almost two years, because I’d found a book which had been this sketch of a major author [about] the Napoleonic Wars.

From that I found a writer, I paid the writer, I paid for the travel myself to Hollywood, and finally sold ‘The Duellists’. That got made and got me a prize at Cannes. Bless them, they didn’t really know what to do with such an art film, so they made seven prints for the United States.

So I said to [David] Puttnam, Lord Puttnam now, “Is this normal?” He said, “No, they really don’t like it.” But from that, somebody at Cannes called Laddie [Alan Ladd Jr., head of production at the time] at Fox, saying, “Somebody who’s got a great eye has done something called ‘The Duellists’. Consider him for ‘Alien’.”.

Kate Herron
RSA Films

What fictional object have you seen in a movie that you wish was real?

Ridley> My first four movies are pretty major – ‘The Duellists’, ‘Alien’, ‘Blade Runner’ and ‘Legend’. That’s a startlingly different set of material coming out of the box.

For me, ‘Legend’ was the biggest challenge, because I had to train the horses to do what they had to do, go into the world of fairy stories. I had to convert the Bond stage into a real forest. Forests indoors always looked terrible, but I had a great production designer called Assheton Gorton.

So there we were, bulldozing 28 tons of hoggin across the floor of the Bond stage to give me the shots. And that’s where I wished I had a real forest. I thought I was in deep trouble. That’s a fictional forest.

In the end it worked out great. No visual effects. It’s all real.

Bianca Poletti
Biscuit Filmworks

So many of your films – whether it’s ‘Alien’, ‘Gladiator’, or ‘The Martian’ – centre on individuals surviving in hostile worlds. What is it that draws you to these kinds of environments and stories of endurance?

Ridley> Isn’t life that way? Hostile is just getting a fucking job that pays, if you can, to buy a little house – right? To move upwards in the world. That’s the hostile world. So I think whatever we say, it was always competitive, and it will continue to be really competitive. We live in a hostile world and it’s worse now than ever before.

Show Yanagisawa
RSA Films

When you work with actors, if the rhythm they want to perform in is different from the rhythm (or pacing) you want to express for the overall film, how do you approach that conversation?

Ridley> If you’re asking that when you’re directing a film, you’re way behind. You should have got that pace sorted months ago. You can’t wait until you hit the floor and then go, “Wait a minute, they’re not doing it right.” That’s your job. You’ve got to say no, and you’ve got to fundamentally guide them where you want to go.

But also, keep your mind open. My biggest trick is to cast really well. I’m good at spotting people. When I cast well, you can assume the actor’s pretty good. If the actor’s pretty good, they’ve really thought about it.

The danger is that when you finally come to the floor… one very big actor said this to me. He agreed with me. He said, “The speed you work at, I embrace it. You can give me two takes, I fucking love it. I do not want to know the story of life between every fucking take, because directors talk too much.”

François Rousselet
Riff Raff Films

You’ve created some of the most iconic images in cinema – images that are still touchstones for filmmakers today. Were there ever moments where audiences misunderstood or read them differently than you intended?

Ridley> Yeah. The biggest challenge for me was ‘Blade Runner’. I was introducing [people to] such a world of grunge that they’d never seen before – and that got in the way. Because when you boil it down, past the wonderful universe we created (which actually set the pace for the next 40 fucking years, because that’s the way the world has gone), it got in the way.

So Blade Runner had a disastrous opening. It survived a review from a very important journalist called Pauline Kael in The New Yorker. From that four-page devastation, I framed it and it still hangs behind my desk today. It tells me: do not read the press, ever. Good or bad. And most importantly, you have to be your own critic. If you’re a painter, you stand in front of the canvas every day, wishing you hadn’t done that yesterday. That was good, then you fuck it up by lunchtime. That’s the way it is.

Fredrik Bond
​MJZ​

I once saw an interview with Russell Crowe where he talked about you directing him before the big battle scene on Gladiator. He said that you asked him to contemplate as he watched a little bird on a branch flying off, before looking down the battlefield. Are you always that detailed and nuanced with subtext to your actors on every movie?

Ridley> No. It’s because there was no fucking script. I walked in to Russell and said, “We haven’t got a fucking script.” He said, “No? What am I going to do?” I said, “Meet me on the battlefield.”

So we stood there. I said, “See that? For me, that’s where the Germans are. See that twig? There’s going to be a bird on it. Contemplate the beauty of the bird, then look up at the battlefield, and I’ll begin to roll the cameras.” He said, “Done.” That’s how we got that shot for the movie.

The irony of the bloodbath is at the very end. Russell stands there and it’s beginning to snow. He’s being approached by Marcus Aurelius, and he’s staring at the sword he buried in a tree. Ironically, the bird is standing on the hilt of the sword. I didn’t have the balls to carry that thread through. That would have been a bit too much.

Sasha Nathwani
Caviar

Many of your iconic works, like 'Blade Runner' and 'Alien', have been revisited by a new generation of filmmakers. At the same time, studios today are leaning heavily on existing IP, while original, thought-provoking stories struggle to find the same support, especially with theatrical attendance still below pre-covid levels. Where do you stand on the balance between revisiting existing IP and championing bold new ideas?

Ridley> That’s the hardest question because first of all, you say, I want to be a director – whatever that means. Being a director ain’t glam, it’s exhausting. If you’re not relentless, you’re not going to get there. The key word in any direction: you’d better be relentless. Doesn’t matter who says what – fuck them. You’ve got to go right past that.

So then you agonise: what do I do first? You’ve got 50 or 60 books you’d like to attack but can’t afford. It’s narrowing down: how do I want to be heard? How do I want to be seen? What story do I want to tell? That’s really hard.

Sometimes there’s nothing wrong with taking a piece of public domain and saying, “I love this yarn, I’m going to make the yarn.” We do yarns. We don’t do the story of life in a psychological drama. We are meant to entertain. If you don’t entertain, forget it – you’re not going to last long.

Daniel Kleinman
Rattling Stick

What is your favourite 'Carry On' film? And why?

Ridley> You know, they were funny. And who was the blonde lady – Barbara Windsor. She was hysterically funny. And a very funny guy, Kenneth Williams – I went to see his play in the West End called ‘Share My Lettuce’. He was a constant star of the ‘Carry On’s.

There was a whole period of English comedy. ‘Carry On’ was a laugh a second, but there were also the Ealing comedies – spectacular. I don’t think the ‘Carry On’s were quite at the level of the Ealing comedies, but it’s all part of our language. ‘The Ladykillers’ is fantastic. You couldn’t remake that – even with Tom Hanks it doesn’t work. You need Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers and the mob to make it.

The innocence and the glamour and the fascination of cinema got a little bit watered down to where we are today. We are so sophisticated in terms of visual capability – with AI and digital work – that the personality is evaporating. I think it’s a pity to lose that.